Tag: Continuous Improvement

Unfortunately, many people still think that continuous improvement, high performance cultures, and/or people-centric concepts are for manufacturing. Those that do, are definitely missing out!

Point and case: Scott Smith and I recently had the opportunity to visit and participate in a gemba (go & see) with Karla and Michelle from the Paris Dental Centre. This is not your run of the mill dental office, and they certainly demonstrate that these concepts go well beyond the typical manufacturing environment!

Our gemba started at the main entrance at the front reception desk where the receptionists quickly greeted us with a smile and asked how they could help. What was different than what I’m used to in a professional office was that their duties had been stream lined with the customer in mind. How? There were no phones! They managed the direct face-to-face contact and relationship with their customers, rather than answering a continuously ringing phone line of incoming calls. They focused on their customer, value streamed the roles/responsibilities, and created smooth flow.

As our gemba took us throughout the facility, it was obvious that 5S (sort, set in order, shine, standardize, sustain) principles were also in place as this rather large and very busy dental centre was orderly, and had effective visual controls throughout the facility. Each of the main departments had visual team boards where the teams would conduct daily stand-ups to review their performance results, discuss ideas for improvement, and communicate important messages. Even the dentists had their own board where they met daily to review performance and drive improvement in their work. Standardized work was being implemented in the various roles throughout the office as well.

Now, are there opportunities to do more or to improve further, gain more engagement? Of course! We all have those opportunities! What we have to remember is that continuous improvement, high performance or a people-centric organization is never ending. Why? Things are always changing! Everyone on this journey hits the wall at some point and feels they are not progressing. What’s important to reflect on is where you’ve come from, keep doing what’s working, tweak what’s not, and then keep plugging away at the next steps towards where you want to be.

Do you struggle maintaining good 5S conditions? Ever wonder how some companies are able to sustain world class 5S? It comes down to whether you have a complete 5S system or not. Typically, one or all three of these key components are missing, broken, or are not consistent enough to sustain good 5S conditions.

Most people think of 5S as “Everything has a place, and everything in it’s place”. Some think 5S is just about keeping things clean and tidy. Sure, it’s both of these, but more importantly it’s about having a complete system of being able to quickly and easily identify abnormalities and either take action, or ensure action is taken to correct the situation. When you have more than one person within the same space, things are going to get out of place. Stuff happens in any working environment. A robust 5S system will quickly highlight these deficiencies and allow appropriate actions to be taken to address the root cause.

When 5S is a struggle to maintain, typically one or all three of these components of a robust 5S system are either missing, broken, or at the very least lack the consistency necessary to sustain.

1. Standards – to define normal vs abnormal conditions

Home position tape or markings are pretty common in any environment that has a 5S program. However, the standards must go well beyond just identifying the home positions of equipment, tools, etc. The standards that lead to world class 5S include minimum and maximum levels, how long things should be located in certain designated locations, FIFO/LIFO controls, ability to quickly identify normal vs abnormal conditions, identification of known abnormalities, documented operating procedures, maintenance routines, safety requirements. Standards should be practical, easy to maintain, and be visual and documented. Reliance on ‘institutional knowledge’ is a very good indicator that your standards need attention.

2. Escalation Process – what to do when there is an abnormality

Really escalation process is an extension of standards, but we’ve shown it as a stand alone component due to its importance and that it is very commonly overlooked. World class 5S systems have very well defined escalation processes for what to do when there is an abnormality. Abnormalities are going to occur. Of course through continuous improvement these abnormalities should be tackled and improved, but in any on-going and growing environment, if you are going to continue to exist, things are going to change. With change, comes some level of abnormality. You need to plan for the abnormalities by having clear standards as to what to do when faced with one. These processes may include installing signage that identifies the abnormality is known, who is taking action, when it will be resolved. They may include notifying a specific person or high level leader of the situation. It some cases, the process may call for the operation to stop until the abnormality is resolved.

3. Visual Controls – make abnormalities stand out and be seen

Everyone is dependent on our computer systems these days out of necessity. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t use them, but what I am suggesting is that there is still a need for good visual controls that highlight and make what is in the computer systems visible to employees and leaders. The problem with most computer systems is that they only highlight problems if you look in the system. Also, for those who may not have access to the system, they don’t see the concerns or may not fully understand the magnitude of the situation or know if it is getting better or worse. This can drive a disconnect as to priorities, urgency, and actions required. Use of visual controls are extremely important to maintain world class 5S so that any abnormalities are made very obvious to everyone.

Here’s an example that highlights the need for all 3 of these components. Within a manufacturing cell, there is a need for a partially complete unit to move to another cell for testing. Not all units require this interim test though. The process is that when required the manufacturing cell moves the unit to the test cell for testing or to await testing. Sometimes, the test cell gets backed up, so the manufacturing cell leaves the untested units within their manufacturing cell to wait for test capacity. There isn’t space allocated for the storage of these units within the manufacturing cell so the units are placed anywhere they can be placed. You can see how the 5S in these two areas can quickly become out of control. Why?

Not withstanding the inherent process flow issues, the 5S problem starts with the lack of standards. Standards on how the test cell is scheduled, laid out, and configured to manage the expected work load. Standards around min/max units waiting for test with designated locations and visual controls are missing. There’s no escalation process for what the manufacturing cell should do when the test cell is full. Who to contact, where to place the untested units, and nothing stopping the cell from producing units only to sit and wait for test, or for the test cell to increase capacity. There is a lack of visual controls that clearly indicate there is a problem. The situation would be visual in the production control system, but on the floor, the condition is not visual. This could result in the test cell not having full awareness of the backlog, loss of FIFO by scattering the units anywhere would occur, the magnitude of the situation would be diffused by the units being squirreled away throughout the manufacturing and test cells, resulting in a missed opportunity for all involved to understand the magnitude and align on the needed priority to address.

In March 2018 I started this leadership and continuous improvement blog because of my high passion on the topic, my experience, and a strong desire to help and coach others. What was an unexpected surprise to me was the personal challenge and development I received in the process. Learning about social media, what works, doesn’t work, interacting with others that read my posts, etc. In addition, I was blown away with the connections I made and the feedback received on the posts. At no time did I have any grand plan for where this blogging would take me other than to help others and to challenge myself.

Well, I’ve decided to take the next step. A big next step! I’d like to introduce a new company ‘High Performance Leaders Inc.’ (HPL) which was founded byScott Smith and myself. I left my position at Amazon to start this new company because of the passion I have for continuous improvement and the development of leaders. There is so much unrealized potential out there in people and organizations and our goal at HPL is to disrupt that condition!

A highly engaged and motivated employee is the most formidable weapon that an organization can utilize to compete and win. This depends on strong and committed leaders, an effective management system structure, and a culture based on respect, trust and performance. This September HPL is launching a comprehensive and practical skills development program that will provide senior level leaders with a core success factor; the skills to lead and develop a high performance organization sustained through the habits of an Effective Leader. This 12 month program launches this fall.

A highly engaged and motivated employee is the most formidable weapon that an organization can utilize to compete and win. An engaged and motivated employee is more focused on doing their work, more productive, and is more likely to have a better work and home life. However, less than 30% of an organization’s people fit this category. Less than 5% of organizations sustain high performance over the long term. One of the limiting factors may be your management system.

Here are a few simple steps to start to build a strong management system.

First, it is important to understand the purpose of a management system. In simple terms, your management system is in place to make sure you are dong the right things for your customers (or clients or patients). It does this by connecting everyone in your organization to your vision, strategy and big outcome measures to allow everyone to understand how they can impact the vision and connect to the big outcomes. The management system engages our humans through solving their own problems. The most effective way to do this is through ‘low tech, high touch’ planning and measurement white boards.

Here are the steps to start building or improving your management system:

1. Identify your customer and understand what value they need from you.

I find in a lot of cases, there is not a strong understanding of who the customer is. Your customer is who gets direct benefit or value from what you do. For example, in health care, the patient receives the direct value from the care they are given. If my role is a support operation in manufacturing, such as engineering that develops product drawings, it is the people who build the product from the drawings. If my role is production, I deliver value directly to the end customer for the product.

2. Understand how you can easily measure the value you provide to the customer.

Our customers are easy. They want simple things. They want their stuff NOW. They want it PERFECT. They want it WASTE FREE. They may also want a good experience during the process.

I recommend you start with NOW as it is the easiest. We should all have a plan to deliver what our customer’s need when they need it. My customer needs their drawings today to build their product. My patient wants to continue to get better. All you need to do is measure how well you delivered on your plan. I would also recommend using a planning white board to show your commitment to your plan.

3. Graph your results to understand how you are doing.

What does a good day look like? Did we have a good day? Typically it is getting done what we need to accomplish for our customer. If you started with NOW, on your next white board – performance board – graph how well you are doing. Measure for a few weeks so you can start understanding a longer term trend in performance.

4. Start understanding why.

Why did we not have a good day? If you did not have a good day and did not accomplish what you needed to do for your customer, start understanding the reasons that are blocking your performance. You should start seeing some recurring reasons. For each reason, understand how bad it is by adding a bar or Pareto graph under your performance graph to track the number of occurrences.

5. Run some experiments to make it better.

Once you have a good understanding of the reasons why you are not having a good day, start running some simple experiments to fix the problem. Below your bar graph, document the experiment and indicate when you started the experiment on your performance graph. This will allow you to see if the experiment had the results you hoped for. If it did, adopt this as a new why to do your work. If it did not ‘t, try new experiments until you learn what does work.

6. When you are ready, add your other measures.

NOW, PERFECT, WASTE FREE. Keep it simple and do not add too many additional measures. Fewer measures are better, but it is important not to have a lonely number so you need to provide some balance. For example, if you measure NOW, balance it by making sure you are also delivering what you customer needs PERFECT.

Remember – a strong management system is elegantly simple and is driven by the daily connections we make with our people.

Wow! Is it remotely possible that only 5% of companies are successful at creating a continuous improvement organization? But, why?

According to a post by High Performance Solutions Inc., less than 5% of continuous improvement initiatives achieve long-term results and sustained improvement. Through industry member problem solving they determined it was human factors and lack of management systems that lead to failures. Actually, is this so surprising? The question we need to ask ourselves though is, why? After all, leaders want to improve the performance and efficiency of their organizations.

From what I’ve seen and experienced, the main reasons seem to be one of, or in combination of the following:

Weak or missing vision

CI not integrated into the mission of the organization

Not enough focus or experience to deliberately create a CI culture

Impatience to invest long term, which is necessary to change and/or create culture

Disconnect between words/desires and leader actions

Management systems do not align or are disconnected from the desired CI culture

Leaders don’t walk the talk

Lack of or inconsistent leader standardized work at all levels

Misaligned outcomes or benefits between the organization and the employees

Poor or non-existent “go & see” or gemba reviews by senior leaders to confirm the actual condition and gain engagement

Unfortunately, the list goes on….

Let’s learn collaboratively! What has been your experience as to why organizations fail at creating long-term results and sustained improvement? Leave a comment! Let’s do this!